Can Vietnam Awaken Us Again? Teaching the Literature of the Vietnam War

Vietnam War literature profoundly affects today's students because of its confrontation with their own false consciousness, because it casts such glaring light on our current crisis, and because "Vietnam" has such lingering and puzzling meaning for them. Anyone growing up in America in the past couple of decades probably has sensed the emotional temperature rising whenever the term "Vietnam" has been used in any group of adult Americans. Many of my students have fathers, uncles, or other relatives who fought in the war. Often this makes the subject taboo in their homes, thus arousing the usual human curiosity about forbidden zones. Many students are also drawn to what is known as "the sixties," which for some evokes a strange nostalgia. As one young woman put it, "I wish that I were the same age I am now in the sixties." One text by a Vietnam veteran affects students more profoundly than any work of any kind I have taught in over four decades in university classrooms. That is Passing Time, a memoir by W. D. Ehrhart which makes readers participate in his own transformation from a gung-ho anti-Communist who enlisted in the Marines at the age of 17 and served two tours in Vietnam into a radical visionary artist. Once, when I walked into class the day the book was due, there was an odd hubbub. One conservative young man, who had attended military school and was planning to be a career military officer--and who had been arguing vociferously with me all semester--seemed especially upset. Suddenly he blurted out: "I've never read a book like this. It's changing my whole life." The next thing I knew, he was up in front of the class saying, "We've got to have this guy come talk with us. Why don't we kick in to get whatever it takes to bring him." There was a chorus of assent. Someone called out from the back, "Let's each put in five dollars." Someone else yelled, "Five dollars? It costs seven fifty just to see a movie." (This was in 1993.) "O.K.," said a new voice, "let's make it ten dollars." And so these students, almost all of whom work to be able to afford college, contributed ten dollars apiece to get a visit from W. D. Ehrhart. 6 My "Vietnam and America" course began in 1980, just as the war was being redefined as a "noble cause." The course is described in my "Teaching the Vietnam War in the 1980s," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 1981, an article that instantly generated a firestorm of criticism but also helped initiate courses at other instituti